


Fellow Traveller

by Festiveviolet31



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst?, Definitely Angst!, Gaby is a badass, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Minor Violence, Mission Fic, Research is not my kink but I tried, just a little though, some cussing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-05-26 05:13:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14993552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Festiveviolet31/pseuds/Festiveviolet31
Summary: It's October of 1964. With the British General Election swiftly approaching, the trio is called to run surveillance and tie up loose ends from Rome. However, a close call at a bar and brief encounters with a ghost from the past make them realize that this mission may be more personal than they first believed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MollokoPlus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollokoPlus/gifts).



> To MollokoPlus: here is the first chapter of your gift! Thank you for appreciating BAMF Gaby as much as I do. Thank you for your love of angst and penchant for whump :) I hope you enjoy this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it for you.

“Stay,” she whispers in the darkness of the early morning.

A breeze floods through the open window and reaches her bare skin, sending goose pimples down her spine and arms. With closed eyes, she searches for a quilt, until a pair of large, warm hands folds it over her shoulders.

Illya whispers as he smoothes her hair away from her face. Gaby feels stubble and soft lips against her cheek. “It’s almost five.”

Gaby sighs as she leans into Illya. Her eyes remain closed but she feels him, catches the smell of his deodorant and toothpaste as he plants a kiss on her forehead before standing and leaving. The wooden floorboards of her apartment creak under him as he walks, slowly and quietly, to the bedroom door.

“ _Душа моя_ ,” Illya says softly to her from across the room, shutting the door behind him.

“And you, mine,” is the last thing Gaby mumbles before turning onto her other side and falling back asleep.

 

* * *

 

“Lovely day, t’isn’t it?”

It takes a few moments for Gaby to realize she’s being addressed.

“I’m sorry?” Gaby asks. Standing in the middle of the tube with people packed on all sides of her, she turns to her left, to a hunched older woman seated at her side.

“Lovely day,” the woman repeats with a nod.

Gaby smiles hesitantly before going back to the copy of _The Guardian_ open in front of her. _Please do not talk to me_ , Gaby thinks, craning her neck over the clusters of commuters also crammed into the car, hoping to make herself look occupied. She has always hated chatterers, those Underground occupants that insist on speaking with anyone in their radius. Gaby winces when she hears the old lady speak again.

“I’ll be right happy when it’s all over.”

Gaby looks back and smiles brusquely. “Pardon?” she asks, leaning down to hear the woman over the dull, mechanical roar of the London Underground. The old lady smiles and tilts her grey, crinkled face to the newspaper in Gaby’s hands.

“Tories, Labourers, it makes no difference to me,” the old woman says again. She looks up at Gaby from her seat expectantly. She hadn’t even purchased the newspaper for the upcoming election coverage, Gaby thinks, her mouth slack and searching for an answer. In fact, she rarely paid attention to the cover stories at all. Every morning she’d purchase the paper on her walk to the tube. Every morning she ignored the headlines, combing instead through the sections on entertainment and music and sports, the things she was deprived of for so long behind the Iron Curtain.

Gaby flips to the front page of _The Guardian_. Large, black letters scream from the front page, declaring October 8th, 1964 to have been the “noisiest night of the election”. She wants to say something, but tube slows to a halt before Gaby can find the words. An automated voice announces the destination- Curzon Street Station- and Gaby turns back to the woman and smiles. “This is me,” she says with a nod. She pushes through the crowds before the chatterer can speak again and takes a large step onto concrete.

“Tories and Labourers,” she says in the old woman’s voice as the train roars to life behind her. She murmurs to herself as she weaves between bodies toward the exit, before colliding sideways into a broad chest and set of shoulders.

“Pardon,” Gaby grumbles as her feet slip beneath her and she bumps into another body behind her. A large hand grabs her elbow and steadies her.

“Sorry,” the man holding onto Gaby says. It is a voice that she recognizes — the flip of a Russian _r_ against the back of the mouth and the deep, serious tone — and with a half-formed smile, she glances up, expecting Illya.

“How did you get here?” she wants to ask. For the briefest moment, she sees a pair of cool, blue eyes staring back at her. Before she can take a closer look, the man is gone. Gaby barely catches a glimpse of the back of his blond, buzzed head before he disappears into a sea of black suit jackets and trench coats. She huffs as she regains her footing and apologizes to the person behind her. As she climbs the stairs towards daylight, the sound of a Russian accent hitting her ears is all she can think of.

“Morning,” Gaby says minutes later, setting her stuff on top of her desk in the translation department. “Department” had been a generous term, Gaby had thought when Waverly had offered her a position there months ago. He’d mentioned the job after Istanbul, the same afternoon he’d called her into his office and given her his sincere condolences about her father. He’d referred to the role simply as an “extension” of her training as a field agent. He’d also passed her a set of silver keys to an agency-issued flat in London, and with the same resolve she’d felt flying over the Iron Curtain, Gaby had accepted.

“Good morning,” her coworker mouths to her from the closest desk. Gaby had been placed next to Susan Pentland on her first day as a translation analyst, a woman with a strong cockney accent and orange hair that cascaded down her back in waves. Today, the hair that Gaby has seen and envied for months is wound into a pile at the top of her head, covered in part by a set of bulky black headphones. In her mouth, a half -chewed pencil, the sign to Gaby that her friend and coworker is deep in her work.

Gaby doesn’t bother Susan again. Instead, she sits at her desk and faces the various piles of manila folders and audio files, some placed there overnight from different agents in the building, some piles constructed by Gaby herself. “Mess” is what Illya had dubbed her workstation the first time he’d wandered into the translation department looking for her, and Gaby had protested until he’d merely squeezed his mouth shut into a tight line and shook his head repeatedly. The thought makes her eyes roll now as Gaby reaches for the newest pile of folders. She begins to leaf through them before a yellow memo wedged between two files catches her attention. On it, she recognizes the handwriting of Waverly’s receptionist. _High priority conference, 0730 hours._ She snaps her head in the direction of the entrance, squints her eyes to read the minuscule numbers on the clock above the double doors. 7:17 a.m.

_May as well go_ , Gaby thinks, adjusting a haphazard pile of papers before standing and walking toward the exit. She weaves between other desks and nods at other agents as they make eye contact with her. The translation department is small, nine people and their hard work shoved into the basement until Waverly can find “more suitable accommodations”. By now, Gaby has learned more about her quiet, subdued desk mates. She has heard their languages and their small talk, has gone to lunch a handful of times with most of them.

She swings the frosted doors open into the hallway before stopping in her tracks. “Illya,” she says, although it sounds more like a question.

He is frozen mid-step in the hallway. Gaby smiles when she takes in the sight of him, notices the light blue button up shirt she has come to favor of all of his clothes, and smiles wider.

“I was…” Illya mumbles, gesturing over his shoulder to the door leading to the stairs. Gaby nods and crosses the distance between them in the hallway.

“Good morning,” she whispers under her breath as she wraps her arms around his waist. He stoops down to her height and wraps his long arms around her shoulders. “How are you?”

She asks if as if she did not just see him, did not just spend the previous night wrapped in his arms. She knows Illya does not like the question. She has seen how he freezes, has heard him explain how the KGB trained him to forget his feelings and himself. On this October day, she asks anyway.

She feels him shrug and looks up at him. The smile he gives her doesn’t reach his eyes, and she nods knowingly. She knows why he hates Octobers; he’d explained it to her once, after Istanbul, on an overnight train ride to their next assignment.

“My mother died this time, three years ago.”

That night, Gaby told him she was sorry, had woven her fingers through his when he said he could not answer any more questions.

“Were you on the train today?” she asks now, her body relaxing into his. They are practiced, together, in dancing. They dance around the topic of his family, both of them wincing when someone they do not know asks questions about his home. They dance as a distraction, and each pirouette Gaby spins around him is always one more attempt to blur the memories he does not share.

“No,” he says, before the sound of a door shutting somewhere down the hall abruptly breaks them apart.

Illya had held Gaby in the grass in Rome, had finally kissed her on the street in Istanbul under a starry sky, had taken to spending most evenings either in Gaby’s bed or making space for her in his own. And yet, here they are now, Gaby thinks, leaving each other in the mornings before the sun comes up, pretending to everyone except themselves and possibly Solo that their relationship is purely a professional one.

“Strange,” Gaby says as the two head back toward the stairs. Illya opens the door for her, and before she begins the climb to Waverly’s office, Gaby stops to look at him. “I must have seen a ghost.” She turns away from Illya’s confused expression and starts the ascent. He shuffles behind Gaby awkwardly as her short legs carry her up the steps. They climb the remaining stairs in silence, although Gaby is keenly aware of Illya’s looming presence behind her. With a nervous hand, she adjusts the hem of her sweater over the back of her slacks, smoothing a hand over her side. Illya coughs lightly over her shoulder. Gaby smiles as the two reach the top floor of headquarters, and she swings the door open with a final, flirtatious glance toward Illya.

“Ah, there you two are.” Solo’s clear, crisp voice greets them as Gaby steps onto the fifth floor. He looks to Gaby like something out of a magazine, leaning casually on one leg, his hair glossed back, his pale, grey suit neatly pressed. “Excuse me,” Solo says to the young woman looking up at him from her spot behind the desk. He nods and smiles, and Gaby is certain she hears an audible sigh from Waverly’s receptionist as he walks toward them.

“Nice shoes,” Gaby mutters, unimpressed.

“They’re Givenchy monk straps, thank you,” he says, embracing her first before turning to Illya. The two men exchange a nod and a handshake before Solo goes back to Gaby. He takes her hand and kisses it, and Gaby laughs.

“It’s nice to see you,” she says, chuckling and giving him a proper hug. He agrees, tells her he missed her in Florence, and Gaby rolls her eyes and laughs again. “That sounds just taxing.”

Solo opens his mouth, about to defend his recent solitary mission in the Italian countryside, when a mousy voice from behind the desk cuts him off.

“Mr. Waverly is ready for you now.”

The trio cross the cream-colored lobby to the third door on the left. Solo leads them in, pausing first for a brief knock, and lets both Gaby and Illya enter Waverly’s office before flashing a final smile to the receptionist. “Deborah,” he says, as if to say goodbye before shutting the door.

Gaby had always thought of Waverly’s office as relatively _unspecial_ , given his position as the head of a special unit. The room, also cream, had always felt too small to Gaby, especially with Solo or Illya in it. There was space only for a desk, two chairs behind it, and the navy Victorian parlor chair Gaby had seen Waverly sit in only once before. Now, the man sits behind his large, teak desk. Behind him, a floor-to-ceiling window reveals sun and the grey rooftops of London. Waverly had once revealed to Gaby during a meeting that the window had been his sole reason for choosing this office.

“Come in, come in,” Waverly says as he lays the phone to the receiver. Gaby, Solo, and Illya take their usual spaces in his office, with Solo leaning against the wall and Gaby seated between her two partners. Waverly smiles, asks Solo how his recent mission ended. They talk briefly and casually, and it feels to Gaby as if they’re normal coworkers catching up after a vacation.

The two men finish and Waverly turns back to Gaby and Illya and addresses his team as a whole. “Well, now that we’re all here, some nasty business has come up with the election that I need your assistance on.”

Yes, the election. Gaby has been aware of it the past few months, has only passively paid attention to the headlines and radio ads that were loud and bold and inescapable. “It doesn’t quite matter who, Conservative or Liberal, is in office in our line of work,” Waverly had once told her during a late evening at headquarters. Even behind the Wall, Gaby had rarely cared about politicians or their promises. In Berlin, she hadn’t cared who constructed the Wall, only that she, somehow, was going to find a way over it.

“There seems to have been a few disturbances recently,” Waverly says, his voice bringing Gaby back to the present.

“Disturbances, sir?”

It is Solo who asks, his face curious and almost excited. Like a child in a candy store, Gaby thinks, shaking her head and turning back to her boss.

“Indeed. Some threats have been made against Harold Wilson recently.” Gaby’s eyes dart to both Illya and Solo. They look to Gaby as if they know every word coming out of Waverly’s mouth, like they both spend time reading election coverage instead of flipping to the entertainment section. Gaby focuses back on Waverly, clears her throat and leans in toward her handler, and hopes that she looks like she knows what’s going on.

“There was an issue last week at a fundraising event hosted by Harold Wilson and his wife. Reportedly, a server was overheard by Mrs. Wilson referring to guests as ‘flies’—” Solo interrupts him then, confusion on his face, and Waverly merely nods. “That’s right, Solo: ‘flies’. Allegedly Mrs. Wilson confronted this server several times before asking him to leave. I believe her exact words were that he smiled a ‘cold, dead smile’ when she dismissed him. They later found the charming sentiment “Masters and Slaves” painted on the wall of the dining room. It seems fairly cut and dry given that we found security footage of him fleeing the grounds soon after.”

“Have you found him?” Gaby asks.

“That’s where you come in,” Waverly says with a subdued smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He hands plain manila folders to Illya, Solo, and Gaby. “Of additional concern is earlier this May, Harold Wilson’s son, Robin Wilson, seems to have been the indirect target of an attack at the school where he teaches maths.”

Gaby opens the folder as Waverly says this. The first page is a shadowy, blown out photo pulled from a security camera. When she squints, she thinks she can make out the face of the man in question, walking between buildings on what Gaby assumes to be the Wilson estate.

“In May, typhoid broke out in the school where Robin Wilson is employed. Thankfully no fatalities, but over 400 teachers and children were at risk.”

Gaby remembers it faintly. She’d watched the headlines unfold, tried her best to ignore images of sick children that seemed to plaster every magazine cover in London. She’d only listened to one story on the radio, a personal account of a young mother who almost lost her two young sons. The woman had pleaded with God, crying endlessly over the radio, until the host had gently coaxed her off the air. Gaby had avoided turning the radio back on for weeks after.

“Wasn’t that Public Health issue, sir?” Illya’s voice is low and restrained. Gaby glances up from her file to look at him. His eyes are dark, his eyebrows pulled tight.

“Good question, Kuryakin. We thought, initially, that it was. However, an employee roster released at the time of the outbreak shows the same man — George Brodksy is his name — was on staff in the cafeteria at the school for a brief time, only about two months before the incident. School was suspended for several weeks after the outbreak, but Brodsky never reported to work after that. He kept a low profile until showing up at Harold Wilson’s party.”

The sun, visible through the window, moves behind a cloud, and the shadow it casts in Waverly’s office makes Gaby feel uneasy. She swallows down the tension she feels building in her throat and glances to her partners. Solo has lost the look of excitement, replaced instead by blank stoicism. When she turns to Illya, his face is the same.

“Needless to say, we are concerned that there may be foul play. It’s possible that Wilson’s opponent, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, is responsible. With the election approaching in exactly a week, we have been tasked with figuring out who’s to blame and making sure nothing else problematic comes to light.”

“You think Wilson is being targeted?” Solo asks.

Waverly nods. “We suspect that the typhoid may have been meant specifically to harm Robin Wilson, and by extension, his father.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” says Solo, moving from his position against the wall to stand at the edge of Waverly’s desk. “How is this an international issue?”

Waverly sighs, looks between the three spies sitting in front of him, and glances down at his own dossier laying closed on his desk. “It’s not so much of an international issue, Solo, as it is a personal one.”

Gaby sees Solo’s eyes grow wide, and she gulps again. They each turn to page five of their dossiers at Waverly’s instruction.

“Recognize him?” Waverly asks, and the look on his face makes Gaby pause before she glances down at the document in her lap. She inhales sharply, hears Illya whisper under his breath beside her. In her hands, a glossy black and white photo shows a group of men, standing in line at a shipping yard, the familiar word “Diadema” visible over their shoulders. In the center, Gaby recognizes the handsome face of a man she thought long dead, stabbed by Illya in the grass on a rainy afternoon in Rome. There is silence among the four of them for several moments before Solo’s voice, angry and impatient and surprised, is the first thing Gaby hears.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tension builds as Gaby gets closer to finding answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is chapter two of your gift fic, MollokoPlus! I'd planned to release a new chapter every Wednesday for the next few weeks, but my patience got the better of me and I wanted to gift you with a little more, a little sooner!

The rain thrums against the roof, frantic and heavy. Beneath it, Gaby lies awake.

She has long since abandoned the idea of sleeping. Instead, she stares up at the dark ceiling, illuminated only by the distant, orange glow from streetlights through the window. She thinks of the tips the U.N.C.L.E physician recommended to her for sleeping and wants to chuck her pillow against the wall. 

“Breathe evenly and deeply,” he’d told her. “Chamomile tea sometimes works well.”

Gaby had wanted to laugh then, wants to scream now. None of his “tips” had involved knocking back a tumbler of scotch. None of his recommendations had been to drink yourself to sleep and forget what you’d done the next morning. Gaby begrudges that physician, begrudges herself for taking his useless advice and emptying her apartment of alcohol. Begrudges Illya, too, for choosing to sleep at his own place tonight. They’d agreed on it after their meeting with Waverly; Gaby had needed to stay late at work, and Illya was cashing in on his promise of having dinner with Solo when he returned from Florence. Gaby’s bed had felt larger and colder when she’d gotten back from the office. And now, with a frustrated sigh, she turns from her back to her side and squeezes her eyes shut. 

Her mind is quiet for a mere moment before her thoughts flood her mind. Despite the pattern of her breaths, Gaby cannot forget the details of her day. She cannot forget Waverly’s ominous words during their meeting, nor can she forget the smug face of Alexander Vinciguerra as he stared back at her from her dossier. She can’t shake the sense of dread that had trickled down her spine as Waverly, with regret and disdain, had informed them that their mark had once been an employee of Vinciguerra shipping. 

“You think he shares their ideologies?” Illya had asked, voice low and husky.

“My fear is that he does. It’s your job to find out how seriously he feels about them,” had been Waverly’s final words as they’d stood in his office and shaken hands. They are the words Gaby replays in her head now as cold, feline blue eyes stare back at her from behind closed eyelids.

Gaby forces her eyes open. Placing a steadying hand against her chest, she feels her shortened breath and elevated heartbeat. Gaby flips from her side to her back. Once more, she lies awake, staring at her ceiling, willing herself to fall asleep. 

She lays that way for a minute before she hears it. Through her open bedroom door, she hears the whisper of keys, hears the slow scrape of metal against metal. 

Gaby’s stomach drops, and she springs from bed silently. She goes to her dresser and opens the top drawer, fumbling for her pistol and the loose bullets she keeps there. The lock to her front door clicks open just as she loads them into the magazine.  She waits in the doorway of her bedroom as the intruder slips into her apartment, floorboards creaking under their weight. That’s when  she raises the pistol to eye level and flips on the light switch.

“ _ Heilige scheiße _ !” Gaby yelps, her pistol still aimed forward.

Standing in her apartment, with both hands raised in the air, is Illya. 

“Easy,” he mumbles, blinking his eyes in the sudden light. “It’s just me.”

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Gaby asks through her teeth, removing the bullets from the barrel. She feels her heartbeat quicken even further, either from surprise or the anger she feels brewing at Illya for sneaking up on her.  

“I,” Illya says, a sheepish look on his face that Gaby hopes he changes. “I could not sleep.”

She snarls. “You scared the piss out of me!”

“You gave me a key,” he protests.  

It’s true. They’d exchanged keys weeks ago. Illya, at first, had justified it as a “safety measure”, had told Gaby that he felt better knowing he could reach her quickly if she needed him. It had been the first time, Gaby had noticed, that she’d seen Illya truly nervous. The tips of his ears had grown pink, and he’d cleared his throat more times than she could count. 

“Safety measure?” Gaby had repeated, her eyebrows high and her mouth curled into a smile. She’d watched as Illya looped a finger into the collar of his turtleneck and pulled at it.

“Easy access, you know, if one of us is compromised.”

She’d nodded then, had flipped the brass key Illya had given her over in her hand. She had never received a key before. Had never had anyone to give a key to. Now, Gaby wonders if she regrets it. 

“I have a key to your place, Illya. Doesn’t mean I’m going to skulk around at night and frighten you!” she says, slamming the pistol back into the drawer of her dresser and stomping from her bedroom to the kitchen. Behind her, she feels Illya’s body move, watches as it casts a shadow against the wall of her living room. 

“What are you doing?” he asks cautiously.

“Getting a drink.”

She flips on the kitchen light and turns on the faucet. The water sputters as she grabs a kettle and fills it. Illya pauses just outside the kitchen. His hands are at his sides, not quite fists, and his eyebrows scrunch together. 

“Are you mad?” he asks as Gaby puts the kettle on the stove. She is angled away from him, her arms crossed in front of her. 

“No, just—” she says at first, her words clipped and impatient. She pauses. As steam begins to puff from the kettle, she breathes. She waits for the kettle to whine before removing it and pouring it into a mug she pulled from the cupboard. 

“You just scared me, that’s all,” she says with a sigh. Reaching on her tiptoes, she fumbles with another cupboard. Illya clears his throat behind her, as if to remind her of his height.

“Can you help me?” she asks, looking back at him. His expression softens, and he loosens his hands as he crosses the kitchen in two, easy strides. 

“Chamomile?” he asks from above. 

She shakes her head and asks for peppermint instead. He lowers a single teabag down to her, and she unwraps it and dunks it in the steaming water. They stand in the kitchen in silence, Gaby cradling the mug in her hands, Illya close and gazing down at her. 

“I’m sorry. I did not mean to frighten you,” he says, his voice soft and low in his throat.

The first thing Gaby sees when she looks up are his eyes, warm and sincere in the bright light of her kitchen. She tells him that she’s sorry he couldn’t sleep and steps closer, resting her head against his chest. His hands rest on the tops of her shoulders, rubbing small circles in her knotted muscles, and she breathes in the smell of his laundry detergent.

“Let’s go to bed, yes?” he asks against her hair. 

Gaby nods. She wants to tell him that she couldn’t sleep either. She wants to tell him that before he’d arrived in her apartment, she’d doubted whether she could sleep at all without his body in her bed. She wants to say that she couldn’t sleep without knowing he’d checked the locks, that she couldn’t relax without Illya first reading to her in German or Russian. 

“Yes,” is all she says instead. 

 

\----------

 

The next morning, as the sky lightens from ink black to pale, dusty blue, Gaby feels Illya stir beside her. 

“No,” she whines, reaching for him sleepily under the covers. Behind closed eyes, she hears him laugh as his hands pull her close. “Don’t go,” she says against his chest. 

Instead of a response, Gaby hears Illya breath deeply. She wishes, desperately, to stay like this: Illya’s warm body wrapped around hers, the two of them sleeping later than they should. “You could stay,” she whispers, eyes still closed, her lips pressed against the nape of his neck. 

He whispers the time like he does most mornings and leaves the bed. A rush of cold air replaces where his body was, and Gaby tightens the blankets around her as she listens to Illya’s footsteps across her bedroom. The door to her bathroom opens and closes. A moment later, and the sound of the faucet running causes Gaby to open her eyes. She cracks her knuckles and wrists as she flips onto her back. Groaning, she peels herself from the bed to a seated position on the edge of her mattress. She rarely gets up when Illya does, and as Gaby’s feet touch the cold, stark wood floor, she remembers why. 

She shudders under her breath and stands quickly, flitting to the bathroom and swinging the door open without knocking.

She finds Illya’s eyes in the mirror above the sink. He holds a towel against his neck, likely catching the beads of water she sees rolling down his cheeks and nose. “Good morning,” he says to her reflection. His voice is raspy, surprised.

“Good morning,” Gaby mumbles as she comes up behind him and wraps her arms around his broad waist. She rests her head against his back and sighs as Illya continues toweling himself dry. 

“Are you awake?” he asks her. She shakes her head no, hears him chuckle and continue his grooming. The faucet runs for a second as Gaby smells peppermint.

“What are you doing today?” she asks a few moments later. She counts a full minute as Illya brushes his teeth. She has learned to wait for him. She has learned not to expect him to speak with his mouth full of food or toothpaste suds, has learned to accept the silence as he thinks, or focuses, or completes a task. Eventually, Gaby hears the faucet run and Illya spit. He washes his mouth with water, and Gaby closes her eyes to the sound. Underneath his tee shirt, his back flexes and contracts as he hunches to reach her sink. 

“Going to Harold Wilson’s office,” he says, drying his mouth with the corner of the towel. He turns in her arms to face her, and when Gaby gazes up at him, she finds him smiling down at her. 

“Your cover?”

“Newest member of security team. They are adding more after what happened at the party.” His face falls into a frown, and his eyes are cold and empty as he says this. His face, Gaby has noticed, is always serious when talking business. “And you?”

“Trying to find George Brodsky. I’ll start at the catering business from the party and work from there.”

Illya pulls her close then and wraps his arms tighter around her. “Be careful,” he says, his face buried into her hair. It is what he says everytime, in the year since U.N.C.L.E became a real team. 

“I always am,” she says with a smile.

 

* * *

 

Despite the chill of the October air, King’s Road thrums with life. In every direction, there is something or someone to look at, and Gaby weaves between clusters of bodies on the busy sidewalks. She pushes past businessmen in suits, wedges herself between scores of young women in brightly colored dresses and the young men at their heels.

Gaby stops at a crosswalk and pulls her scarf close around her face and neck. Taxis, buses, and bikes fly past her, and she waits for a break in the chaos before crossing the street. On the other side of the road and several paces down is her destination: a cafe and catering business called  _ Prembly and Sons'  _ that Waverly has sent her to find. 

She darts across the road just as another wave of cars gets closer and quickens her pace as she reaches the sidewalk. There is a reason she never comes to Chelsea, Gaby thinks as she passes the glossy windows of boutiques lining the street. She walks by each without looking inside; this part of London is Solo’s place, not hers. She disregards all of it until she rounds the corner. There, tucked away between a millinery and the post office, is her spot. Faded gold letters line the floor-to-ceiling window facing out onto the street. Gaby adjusts her wool coat and unwinds her scarf in the reflection of the glass before stepping into the shop. 

A bell jingles as Gaby shuts the door behind her, and when she turns toward the cafe, the warm smell of fresh bread washes over her. Seated against the sides of the white walls are diners reading papers and sipping cappuccinos. A small, pig-faced dog snores at the feet of a woman, and Gaby wants to roll her eyes as she surveys the remainder of the restaurant. She takes in everything: the gold, hexagonal tiles on the floor that remind Gaby of a beehive, the lush bouquets of lilacs on the counters, the people seated at the small tables in their rich fabrics and ornate hairstyles.  _ This, _ Gaby thinks as she puts on a smile,  _ is not where she belongs. _

“Good morning,” Gaby says softly as she steps toward the counter. A middle-aged woman smiles at her from behind it and asks Gaby how she is doing in a pleasant, soothing voice. 

“Good, thank you. I’m looking for your manager.”

The woman smiles again and tells Gaby that her manager is in the back. “I’ll go get him for you,” she says as she turns away from the register. Gaby takes another glance around the shop. She checks for anyone, either in the cafe or outside, looking at her too closely while she waits. She scans the room and memorizes faces and outfits and tries, rapidly, to take stock of her surroundings through the window. 

Approaching voices break Gaby from her calculations, and she plasters on another smile as the cashier returns with a short, stout man in tow. “Hello,” Gaby says sweetly, extending her hand. “My name is Marta. I’m from Harold Wilson’s estate.” 

She sees a flash of worry on the man’s face as he shakes her hand. He introduces himself as Alastair Prembly, and Gaby tells him how nice it is to make his acquaintance. 

“Is something wrong?” he asks quietly, stepping to the side of the counter. He gestures for Gaby to follow, and she steps closer. “I told Mr. and Mrs. Wilson how sorry I was for the occurrence, how we’ve never had something like that happen before.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Wilson understand, of course. No, they just sent me about an overcharge on the invoice they were hoping to get cleared up today.” The lie comes naturally to her.

“Overcharge,” he sputters.

Gaby nods and smiles wider. “Yes. On the dessert spread.” She tilts her head and watches as a flush of pink creeps up from the collar of the man’s shirt. 

“I—” he says, his eyes growing wide. “I’m tremendously sorry ‘bout that.” He screws his eyebrows close together and fidgets with his tie. She is about to offer a false solution, say that she can have Mrs. Wilson call back with her accountant if that would be easier, when he interjects.

“We’ll get this figured straight away, miss. Just follow me.” She agrees, and he leads Gaby down a short, dark hallway to a door on the right. 

“I bet that smell never gets old,” Gaby says, tilting her head toward the kitchen. Alastair smiles and agrees plainly as he opens the door to his cramped office. Gaby lets him sit and leaf through the piles of paper covering his desk as she glances down each end of the hallway. 

“Did Mr. and Mrs. Wilson get everything sorted from the other night?” he asks, facing away from Gaby. She murmurs an agreement, and he continues. “Make sure they know that I am more than happy to cater another event for them, free of charge. I told Mrs. Wilson that I only ever hire the best, I do.”

Gaby’s ears perk up, and she looks from the doorway back to Alastair. “I’ll be sure to remind them.” She waits another moment, flipping the words over in her mind, before she speaks again. “Did you have any idea when you hired him that he’d…” she lets her words fade away as Alastair turns to her, a clipboard in his hands. She feigns an innocent interest and watches as his face coils in anger.

“Had no idea. I only hire the best, ask anyone,” he says again, jutting out his bottom lip and pointing an angry thumb toward his chest. “For a bloke like that to risk not only my business, but to threaten Mr. Wilson’s campaign…” he stops short and shakes his head. 

“What kind of a person does something like that, do you think?”

“I’ve no idea,” Alastair says as he waves his hand in the air again. “Real quiet guy when I hired him. Kept to himself mostly.”

“Mostly?” Gaby asks, and a part of her wonders if she sounded too eager. If she did, Alastair seems not to notice as he continues. 

“He had a bloke he’d smoke with during his shifts. You tell the Wilsons that I sat him down after. Made sure I wouldn’t have any more trouble, with his friend goin’ wacky.” He nods to Gaby as he says this, as if to summon her approval. She returns his stare with a small smile, and he gestures back to his clipboard. 

“I’ve got Mrs. Wilson’s initial order and quote here, along with a copy of her receipt.” He unclips a small stack of paper and hands it to Gaby. “You tell her or her accountant if she has any follow-ups, she can contact me here.” He scribbles his office number onto another scrap of paper and hands it to Gaby. Smiling, she pockets it and thanks him for his time. He begins to walk her out, and as they step back into the bright light of the cafe, Gaby looks back. 

“I hope you have better luck with your team,” Gaby says quietly, hoping to God she sounds sincere. Alastair nods. He turns back to his office, and with a step forward, Gaby asks a final question. 

“His friend. Was he a server too?”

The question rings in the quiet bustle of the cafe. She inhales sharply as she watches wheels turn in Alastair’s eyes for a second before he answers.

“No, a lad in shipping and merchandising. Mostly just unloads the trucks. Give the Wilsons my regards, now.” With a nod, he dismisses himself. Gaby thanks him and gives another smile. She turns on her heels and leaves the cafe, and the woman behind the counter says a last goodbye as Gaby exits.

She hisses as she steps back out onto the sidewalk. Wrapping her scarf back around her face, Gaby gives the cafe another look. She considers the way she came and decides against it, passing the post office before turning left down an an alleyway. The noise from the street is quieter, blocked by the wall of buildings that Gaby counts as she walks down the alley. She goes slowly, craning her neck to look through the dirty windows of backdoors. 

“Can I help you?”

She halts mid-step at the sound. It is a voice ahead, low and surly. Gaby takes three more, slow steps forward and stops when a man, dressed in dungarees and a smudged, grey undershirt, comes into her view. He leans against the side of the building Gaby assumes is the cafe, beneath the stoop, a half-smoked cigarette still burning in his calloused fingers. 

Immediately, Gaby straightens her spine and squares her shoulders. She takes two steps toward him. The man pushes aside a mop of brown hair to look her in the face. “My name is Marta Schmidt. I’m with the police,” she says, hoping desperately he doesn’t ask to see a badge. “I’m told you were friends with George Brodsky.”

The man takes a drag from his cigarette and kicks a foot against the ground. “We weren’t friends, but I knew him. You ain't the first bobby come ‘round asking for him.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and the petulant look he gives Gaby causes her to grind her molars together. “Had a lot of ideas, George did. Always talking.”

“Talking?” Gaby asks. The man doesn’t respond, and instead, takes a long pull from his cigarette and raises an eyebrow at Gaby. “I didn’t get your name,” she adds, her mouth in a tight line. 

Several seconds pass before he moves the cigarette from his mouth, puffing a cloud of smoke in Gaby’s general direction. 

“Pete Branom,” he mumbles, finally. 

“And what sorts of things did George talk about, Pete?”

With a reluctant sigh, he tells her. “Politics, social stuff, that sort of thing.” 

“Uh-huh.” Gaby swallows and moves her weight to her other foot. “Any idea where I might find him?”

Pete Branom brings the cigarette to his lips another time, and it takes all of Gaby’s patience to keep from marching over and knocking it from his mouth. She looks him in the face instead, her head tilted to one side, waiting. Finally, without looking at her, he speaks. 

“Korova Bar at Elephant and Castle. You’ll find him there.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gaby tails her mark to a shady corner of town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I can't contain myself to follow my posting schedule, here you go, MollokoPlus! Chapter 3 is up and waiting for you to enjoy.
> 
> Also, I do believe I've completely forgotten to thank two very special people that have helped with this fic. To the incomparable diadema, thank you for being the den mother of this fandom and for helping me with this fic, even before I had words on the page. To somedeepmystery: thank you for being an endless well of positivity and encouragement. 
> 
> I don't think I've publicly thanked either of you yet, and that felt like a crime.
> 
> Please enjoy!

“You’re prepared to go in alone?”

It’s all Waverly asks her, seated at his desk as the clouds in the sky grow dark behind him. He doesn’t ask her if she’s sure, doesn’t question her findings on George Brodsky or her proposal to go looking for him.

“Yes, sir,” she says with a nod. She stands in front of him, her arms folded behind her. She’d taken the tube from Chelsea to headquarters and immediately gone to his office. Despite his secretary’s protests, she’d knocked on his door and hadn’t waited for an answer before going in. Inside, she’d told him about Branom and Prembly, about Korova Bar and her plan to go that night in search of Brodsky.

“Do you need resources of any kind?” Waverly asks, staring at her over the rim of his glasses. Gaby shakes her head no. He dismisses her then, tells her not to hesitate should she need anything of him. It is when she reaches his door that she hears his voice over her shoulder.

“Gaby,” he says, and she turns to face him. “Caution, please.”

It is caution she thinks of as she flies down the stairs to Solo’s office. She’d exercised caution for two years at Waverly’s request before Solo had come strolling into the shop to find her. She’d exercised caution in that hotel room with Illya, wondering at night how his lips would feel against hers, about the strong grip of his hands around her waist, not allowing herself to experience any of it. _Gaby Teller_ , she thinks as she reaches Solo’s office two floors down and throws the door open, _has had enough of caution_.

“Well, hello there,” Solo says as Gaby steps through. She shouldn’t feel surprised that Illya is already in the office, leaning over the desk beside Solo. Something ambiguous and mechanical sits between them, and Illya looks up from it as Gaby walks toward them.

“What do you have here?” she asks, wedging herself between the two men.

“New tech.” Illya gestures to the equipment, a sleek tracking device and receiver that Gaby has little interest in.

“And here I thought you two would actually be surveilling people instead of playing with your toys,” she says, flopping down into one of Solo’s chairs. She crosses her feet on his desk as Solo gives her a playful glare.

“I _will_ be using this to surveil, thank you. Although I’ll hardly need it; Douglas-Home is quite possibly the most boring man in all of London.” Napoleon sighs as he sinks down in his own chair across from Gaby. Illya sits opposite them on the edge of the desk and fiddles with the tracking device in his lap.

“Glad to hear you’re staying busy, then,” Gaby laughs.

“Busy is one way to put it.” He mirrors Gaby and raises his own feet on the desk. He’d protested, at first, at receiving his own office when Gaby had chosen otherwise. Waverly had offered it to her, of course, had offered her an office in the field department with her own name placard and more space than she knew what to do with. She’d politely declined. There was a part of her, perhaps less distant than she’d first hoped, that missed the garage in East Berlin. She’d missed the crowded spaces, missed the sounds of feet shuffling back and forth as she buried herself in her work. In London, she preferred to be one agent surrounded by many, choosing instead the bustle of translations over the silence of a department filled with agents she rarely saw.

Solo hardly seems to mind now, Gaby muses, taking in the familiar sight of her friend in his space. Black and white prints dot the walls; when Gaby had first seen them, she’d merely raised an eyebrow as he had defended himself against her silent accusations. He’d thrown out the government-issue furniture, replacing the desk and chair with plush leather and metal furniture that Gaby had hesitated to know the price of.

“So nothing suspicious coming from Douglas-Home?” Illya asks, and Gaby breaks her gaze from Solo to grin at him.

“Let’s just say that if he _is_ the one that ordered the harassment of the Wilsons, he is the slowest political criminal I’ve ever seen work.” They chuckle, and Solo’s eyes go back to Gaby. “Tell me you’ve got something more interesting.”

“I think I might,” Gaby says, leaning back into her chair. “Apparently Brodsky frequents a spot in South London. Korova Bar. I ran it by Waverly, and I’m going to scout it tonight.”

She almost misses it as she finishes speaking: the nearly imperceptible shift from her partners. The muscles in their faces tighten, Gaby notices, and they both lean forward toward her. Solo is first to speak, and the tone in his voice is careful.

“Korova, you said?”

“Yes.” Her voice is controlled, her eyebrows raised and lips thin as she responds.

She watches Solo choose his words carefully. “Are you… aware of the type of people that frequent that kind of place?”

Gaby feels her impatience begin to pulse as she clenches her jaw. “George Brodsky’s kind of people, I hope.”

A smile passes over Solo’s face, conceding. His feet leave the desk as he leans toward Gaby in his chair. “Gaby,” he says, tilting his face toward her. “Korova isn’t exactly on London’s top sightseeing list. It has a rather unsavory reputation.”

“Then I certainly hope-” Gaby says, sucking in a breath to calm her impatience. “To see Brodsky there when I go. Tonight.”

“Waverly approved this?” Illya asks, standing. Gaby tilts her head up at him and bites down on her jaw. _Don’t_ , she wants to say. _Don’t you dare._ She wonders, from the way Illya looks at her and steps slightly back, if her face manages to say enough.

“And _why_ is it that you must go in alone on this one?” asks Solo. His fingers are poised delicately beneath his chin, his face upturned with his usual pleasantry that Gaby has now learned to see right through.

“Because I don’t need your help, first of all,” Gaby says as she springs out of her chair. “And you two will clearly draw too much attention to yourselves.”

She excuses herself then. She doesn’t wait for Solo or Illya to stop her, either, but she feels the air change as Illya sets down the tracker and strides after her. When she stops abruptly in the frame of the door, he nearly knocks into her.

“And Solo,” she says, and his face perks up toward her. “I’m wearing the black YSL.” That seems to appease him, she thinks, and the last thing she sees before she leaves his office is a smile stretch across his face.

She walks a few paces down the hall before she speaks again. “You can’t convince me differently, Illya.” She feels him come along side of her but doesn’t look. She doesn’t check to see if he is fuming, if his hands are clenched at his sides, but she imagines that they are. Instead, she continues down the hall, smiling at the few agents she sees ducking out of offices or coming up from the staircase. She opts for the elevator, ignoring Illya’s look of protest as he follows her in. He almost drags the gate shut before a mass of men and women shuffle towards them, and Gaby fights the smirk creeping across her face as Illya awkwardly backs into the corner.  

They descend mostly in silence, a few agents murmuring to each other as the elevator sinks slowly to the ground floor. Gaby avoids Illya’s eyes the entire time. It isn’t until they reach the ground floor and the other people in the elevator begin to trickle out that Gaby risks a glance at him. Something flickers behind his blue eyes when he sees Gaby staring from the opposite corner of the elevator, and his lips press together to hold back a smile. When she squints, she thinks she sees the tips of his ears turn pink.

Any tension she felt from Solo’s office fades away as they step out of the cramped elevator and onto the bright, quiet lobby of headquarters.

“Is there any chance you will reconsider?” Illya asks quietly as they walk side by side.

Gaby sighs his name. She has never asked him not to go, she tells him, has never asked him to take her with him on a mission for fear of his competence.

“Because that’s why you’re doing it, aren’t you?” she asks quietly as they pass a pair of agents in inconspicuous suits coming from another elevator. Gaby nods briefly, and as they pass she looks up at Illya. “Aren’t you?”

She watches him struggle to find the words. His eyes squint, and his lips part as he stares through the reflection of the lobby window. “It is not that I doubt your competence,” he says, shaking his head.

“Then why?”

“Because—” he hesitates, and Gaby resists the urge to cut him off. She fights the impulse to ask him again, to step into his space and fill his mouth with accusatory words she knows don’t belong to him. Instead she waits, pulling herself back from him and looking him in the face.

He surprises Gaby when he finally speaks.

“Because I hate this.”

Gaby feels her mouth open and close. She has heard him say it before, has heard Illya explain his worry and dread every moment she is alone on mission. His words are not new, but the sound of his voice hits Gaby’s ears in a way she’s not used to. She wants to reach out to him. She wants to wind her fingers through his and assure him she’ll be fine, that she always is.

She doesn’t, though. In every way, they are exposed, with agents appearing to and fro on one side, the busy street visible through the large window on their other side. She looks him straight in the eye and settles for whispering his name instead.

“Promise—” he looks around as he says it and takes another step closer to Gaby. “Promise you’ll come to my place after, yes?”

Gaby smiles. “I can do that. Promise me you won’t tail me tonight, then.”

Illya’s eyes light up when she says it, and a soft laugh escapes his mouth. From the way his eyes dart away from her to look out the window, Gaby wonders if he was considering it.

“I—” he is about to say something, a snarky retort or a confession perhaps, before he pauses. His words hang in the air as his eyes stare through the window and onto the busy street outside. Gaby thinks she sees the corner of his mouth twitch.

“Illya?”

His name is a whisper he doesn’t hear. She takes a step toward him and tries to follow the line of his eyes out the window. There is nothing to see except passing cars and the brick office building across the street. She searches for danger, for any sign that something is amiss. All she sees are taxi cabs, pedestrians, and businessmen flowing in and out in the building opposite them.

“Illya,” she says again, risking being seen and grabbing his hand. His eyes float back to her then. The familiar blue, _her blue_ that she sometimes catches herself dreaming about, is clouded over. His mouth is pulled into a mangled, tight line, and she searches his face for any recognition. After over a year of working on a team and sleeping in his bed, she has come to read his face. Today, she cannot.

“Everything okay?”

A moment passes before he nods. His mouth smiles to her then, but his eyes do not. They glance away from her and down at the floor, and Gaby dips her head low to follow them.

“Illya?” she asks, stooping awkwardly to look him in the face.

He nods to her again. She pauses, searching his eyes, seeking the right words. Seconds pass before she says his name yet again, asks if he still wants her to meet him at his flat after her assignment.

“Yes.” He finally looks at her as he speaks. His blue eyes are wide, his pupils slightly dilated. Gaby fears she will fall into them if she looks for too long, and so she nods, whispers an okay and turns for the door. When she reaches it, she glances back over her shoulder, hoping for a final reassuring nod from Illya as he watches her go. All she sees is the back of his head and the square of his shoulders as he marches away toward the stairs.

 

* * *

 

It hasn’t rained, thankfully.

It’s the main thought playing in Gaby’s mind as she walks from the tube station toward her destination. Her heels _clack_ against the uneven cobblestones. They are a pair of strappy black pumps, picked by Solo and designed for Gaby’s discomfort. By now, she is used to the way her hips sway in them, the way her sense of gravity shifts as she gains the height. Her legs are bare and cold as she mazes through the foggy South London streets.

She walks down the quiet, dark street toward her destination. The muffled sound of music grows louder as she approaches, stepping between shadows and pools of yellow from the streetlights. The music emanates from a corner building tucked between a warehouse and a boarded-up drugstore. The figures of two women emerge from behind the door as Gaby gets closer.

She flashes a small smile towards the women as she reaches the main entrance. They giggle, not at her, and disappear down the middle of the street. They grow smaller in Gaby’s vision as she watches them go, one hand steadied against the entrance door. _Be safe_ , she wants to tell them, but she doesn’t get the chance as they fall away and turn around a corner.

Gaby takes two breaths before she pushes the shabby, black door open and steps inside Korova Bar.

The scene inside is expected but no less overwhelming as Gaby steps inside and closes the door behind her. She is enveloped immediately—each of her senses flooded by the sound of bass drum, by the smell of whiskey and cigarette smoke. Bodies surround her on all sides, and even in her heels, Gaby feels small and unseen. She scans the room, although it is difficult as she searches for the exits through gaps in the crowded bar. Orange oil lamps glow intermittently throughout the room, casting everything in a soft-focus haze.

She steps into the sea of people and pushes her way through, ignoring the eyes she feels following her as she edges toward the bar. She opens her mouth to say ‘excuse me’ as she nudges past a flock of young women in strappy heels and clinging dresses like hers, but the roar of voices and rock music overpowers her.

Someone grunts as Gaby shoves past and reaches the bar. She clings to the dingy wood like a lifeline as she hugs her body close. _I made it_ , Gaby thinks as she cranes her neck for the bartender. _I’m here_.

The bartender—a sleazy-looking man with greased hair and a sneering face—makes his way to Gaby as she takes in her surroundings. A large mirror faces her from behind the bar. In it, Gaby has a view of the entire room, and she squints as she tries to make out details through the darkness of the packed room. Above the mirror, Korova Bar is spelled out in blinking, fluorescent letters.

“What’ll it be, darlin’?”

Gaby snaps her head away from the mirror to glance at the bartender. “Milk, please.”

The bartender raises a surly, bushy eyebrow at her. Gaby stares back until he folds, leaving briefly to bend toward a fridge down at his feet. He glares as he pours milk from a bottle. He asks her if he can get anything else as he slides the glass toward her. With a smile, Gaby declines, replacing the drink with a bill. She tells him to keep the change as she takes a sip.

Minutes pass as Gaby waits, leaning against the bar, sipping milk and watching the mirror. She catches the gaze of a few men, feels their bodies press against hers for a few moments too long as they order their own drinks. She knows how the tight black fabric of her dress skims down her thighs, knows how the dramatic, plunging neckline highlights her chest and collarbone.

She ignores each of the men that pass her. She is too preoccupied, searching the bar for the face she saw in her mission dossier. Gaby had meticulously examined the security footage from the Wilson’s home. She’d memorized the details of the black and white photograph Waverly had shown them, the photo of George Brodsky wedged in the line between Alexander Vinciguerra and his shipping employees. Gaby knows his face by now. She could recognize his dark, curly hair, could spot his hooded eyes and stooped shoulders if he appeared in the club.

She just needs him to show up.

Times passes, and Gaby orders a second glass of milk before she sees it. Through the mirror, the front entrance opens and a hunched figure steps into the club. He edges through the crowds, doesn’t stop to say hello or order a drink. He doesn't pause to change the song or find a girl to dance with. Instead, he slithers through the crowds until he reaches the opposite wall. It is there that he hovers, waiting at the door Gaby assumed was an exit to a back alley. She watches as he taps the shoulder of another man standing there, taller and bulkier, and waves a wad of bills in front of his eyes. They speak for a moment, and although Gaby can’t discern what they are saying, she watches the reflections of their lips move.

They remain that way- their lips moving, their heads bent toward each other- before the tall man just barely opens the door. In the mirror, Gaby watches as the other figure takes a step inside, sparing a final look over his shoulder. There, across the room, she sees it: a mess of curly hair and a set of deep, hooded eyes.

He disappears behind the door before Gaby can look any longer.

“Damnit,” she whispers, abandoning her drink and pushing away from the bar. She looks around briefly, her head spinning until she sees it. Sitting on the edge of the bar is an unclaimed tray of drinks, likely waiting there to be collected by a waitress in a slinky, tight dress. Gaby moves toward it, disregarding the people around her. With one hand, she grabs the tray, balancing it in the center of her palm. She reaches the other hand to the base of her neck and pulls at her bun until curls fall loose around her shoulders. She shakes them out, winding her fingers through them as she begins to move.

She steadies the tray in her hand as she weaves through the mass of bodies. Her vision zeroes on the door and the man standing in front of it. Smiling, Gaby flutters her eyelashes as she approaches.

“Evening,” she says, shouting over the roar of the music. The guard at the door stands heads taller than Gaby, his body huge and hulking as he stares down at her. She worries for a second he won’t let her through. Just as she opens her mouth to speak—to offer him some lie—he swings the door ajar.

A sudden chill runs down her spine as she glimpses a wedge of yellow light coming in through the door. Briefly, her mind goes to Illya. _What would he say if he were here?_ Gaby wonders. A part of her wishes he were as she looks over her shoulder at the club around her.

With a final smile to the man at the door, Gaby leaves the club and steps toward the light.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On assignment, Gaby runs into a familiar face.

The first thing Gaby notices behind the door is the quiet. 

The dingy, dark night club had nearly drowned her with noise—the roar of people talking all at once, the din of rock music blasting over the speakers. Now, she stands in almost complete silence, with only the  _ thump _ of muffled bass drum echoing through the walls. 

Looking around, Gaby slowly releases the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as the door swings shut behind her. She hadn’t thought of what to expect on the other side, and relief floods through her as she surveys the unextraordinary hallway. Oil lamps hang on the faded, white walls in both directions. She follows the line of them, pausing when her eyes reach the end of the hall and find another large, black door.

With a deep breath, Gaby walks toward it. Her heels feel loud, so loud, against the floor as she jostles the tray of drinks in her palm. Briefly, she thinks of her dress, of the gun holstered to her inner thigh, of the multiple knives sheathed inside of her bra. She wonders if she’ll need to use them as she prepares to walk through yet another door into the unknown. Before she can hesitate, she reaches the second door and pushes it open. 

Cigar smoke fills her nose as she steps through the door and into near darkness. Her eyes adjust, blinking through the shadows. To her left, men and women sit smoking at polished wooden tables, some talking in low voices over the soft jazz music emanating throughout the room. She tries to check their faces in the dim lighting, hoping that one of them is George Brodsky. Distantly, bass thumps through the walls. The sound of it reminds Gaby to breathe and slow her own pulse as she steps deeper into the shadowy room. 

Further in the room is another bar, and Gaby takes a few steps toward it, pushing her shoulders back and glancing around the perimeter. She takes in a handful of women with trays in their hands and small, white aprons around their waists. Gaby resists rolling her eyes at the sight of a seated man in a suit slapping the ass of one waitress in the corner.

She walks toward the bartender—a man with slicked-back hair and a pointed, hooked chin—and smiles. 

“I’m looking for someone,” she says, nodding to the tray in her hand. “Ordered them out front but didn’t pay.”

“Where’s your uniform?” the bartender asks, drying a glass in one hand. His eyes, when Gaby finds them, are skeptical. 

She hesitates for just a moment before speaking. “Some idiot spilled vodka cran on me. Haven’t gotten the chance to get a clean one.”

She sends out a fleeting prayer that this man believes her. As if to answer, he turns from her, going to a cupboard behind the bar and snatching a clean apron from a pile of linens. 

“Who is it you’re looking for?” he asks as he hands it to her. Gaby thanks him, setting down her tray to accept it. 

“Brodsky is his name,” she says, avoiding the eyes of the bartender and tying the apron strings into a bow. She sucks in a silent breath, afraid of what she might see when she looks back up. She has no idea what speaking that name here might do. 

“Just saw him. I think he headed back.” The bartender nudges his chin toward the corner of the room and turns away from her. 

Gaby begins to slowly make the rounds, as if to search for a customer, until her eyes scan the back of the room. There, seated with five other men at a booth in the back, is George Brodsky.

She doesn’t gasp or tense up as she walks toward him, raising the tray of drinks by her side. If anything, she raises her head higher, flashes a bright smile and swings her long curls over one shoulder. She belongs there, she thinks. They just need to believe it, too. 

Hushed voices grow louder as Gaby approaches, and she nearly stops in her tracks when she hears the familiar name  _ Douglas-Home _ through the noise of the room. She manages to glimpse the faces of two men closest to her target before her eyes dart away.

“Can we guarantee he’ll be there?”

Gaby slows, tensing at the sound of the familiar name.

“Our fellow traveller on the inside confirmed it.”

Another unknown voice clears its throat at the table. 

_ “Oy, beautiful!” _

Gaby pauses mid-step, her eyes still on her target, hoping furiously that the voice she hears is not aimed at her. 

“You. The pretty one.”

Gaby’s hands tighten around the edge of the tray as she turns. Across the room at another booth is the hungry face of a drunk man. His large eyes are locked on Gaby, and he smiles as she approaches.

“How can I help you?” Gaby asks, her voice flat, her face blank. 

He is with two other men, and she watches their eyes bulge and their mouths curl as she gets near. 

“Yeah, beautiful. We was just hoping you could help us.”

“These yours?” Gaby asks, gesturing toward the drinks in her hands. She spares a glance over her shoulder towards Brodksy, catches the ambiguous sound of hushed tones and curses herself and the men in front of her. 

“Could be,” one of them shrugs, a Cheshire grin spreading across his smarmy face. Gaby forces herself to smile back. 

“Then I’m going to leave these with you.” She steps toward the table, dispersing the drinks to each of them. “Let me know if I can get you anything else.”

She turns before they can say another word. She zeroes in on Brodsky once more, registers his lips moving and the nods from the other figures seated around him. Quickly, Gaby sees an abandoned table to their immediate right and goes to it. She busies herself with the empty, smudged glasses at the table, clearing them slowly and wiping grime away with the corner of her apron as she listens to the voices from the other side of the booth.

“We’ll have blocked the tunnels and each of the access points. Our Tories  _ and  _ Labourers should be dead before the afternoon vote.”

Gaby halts. She stares into nothingness as faint laughter hits her ears in the darkness. A sick, nauseating chill slides down her spine, and she gulps away the panic she feels beginning to rise in the back of her throat. Blinking rapidly, she focuses back in on the glass still in her hand. 

“You’re sure 54 Broadway is where they’ll meet?” asks a gruff, angry voice. 

“I am more than sure,” says a voice that Gaby recognizes. She nearly drops the glass as the sound of a Russian accent hits her. 

She has heard this voice—the grave tone, the way the  _ r _ flips against the back of the mouth—before. Suddenly, a bright, cool October morning on a train platform floods back to her. The memory grows louder in her ears and rushes by, leaving her breathless and her hands shaking. Gaby blinks furiously, steadying herself against the sound and the realization. In the same moment, she catches a hand waving toward her in her periphery.  Three familiar faces smile back at her when she looks up.

With a gulp, Gaby abandons the voice and walks slowly toward the men. The wood tray quivers under the force of her grip. Every instinct pulls her back toward her mark. She fights against it, tries to smile at the table of drunk men.

“We’d love another round of drinks, love.” It is the same man that called her over before, and Gaby squares her jaw as she looks down at him. She pauses, takes a slow, measured breath through her nose, before she asks what they would like to order. 

“I’d like—” he slides toward Gaby, one hand outstretched. “A little Between the Sheets.”

She doesn’t know specifically what happens first—staggering away or losing the tray from her hands, nor does she register the sound that escapes her lips as fingers press into her thigh. Instead, she forgets her cover, forgets her mark over her shoulder and the shady club around her. She stumbles backward, and when she turns away, a pair of familiar, icy blue eyes are the first thing she sees across the room. 

For a moment, everything pauses. Gaby registers the face looking back at her from George Brodsky’s table: the cool, blue eyes, the cropped blond hair. She takes in the large, pointed nose and pursed, tense lips. 

Staring back at Gaby from across the room and seated next to George Brodsky is the same man from the train station.

“ _ Schiebe.” _

With no regard for the men in front or behind her, Gaby spins on her heels. She abandons the bar, ripping the apron from her waist as she rushes toward the door. She flings it open, feels the air change when she closes it behind her. 

Since the day Waverly strolled into the garage, Gaby has learned never to believe in coincidences. “Nothing happens merely by chance,” he’d told her that day, seated on a grimy stool, looking entirely out of place in the chop shop. She’d learned it to be true as she remained behind the Wall, awaiting misdialed telephone calls to her flat in the wee hours of the morning that contained cryptic messages from her handler. She’d learned to watch and assess the misplaced briefcases left behind in her garage, hiding them away and cracking them open later, searching for instructions on what to do once an American CIA agent came looking for her. 

“Nothing happens by chance,” Gaby breathes now, the image from the man at both the train station and the bar swirling in her vision. Beneath her rib cage, Gaby feels her heartbeat quicken, feels her palms begin to sweat as she stands in front of the second door. 

So she runs. 

Her heels echo against the ground as she flies down the hallway, swinging open the other door and flooding out onto the crowded dance floor of the club. Her time sat at the bar, waiting for Brodsky, feels like a distant memory as she weaves between bodies toward the main entrance. 

She gives a final push between a clump of people and sucks in a breath of fresh air once she’s onto the street. Outside the club, the dark South London corner is quiet. The autumn air stings Gaby’s exposed skin, sends chills down her arms and spine. Her breath puffs in front of her as she spares a glance over both shoulders.

With a final look at the bar, Gaby crosses the street, leaving in the opposite direction that she came. A thousand thoughts race through her mind as she tucks her hands under her arms, shivering. She thinks of Illya, of Solo, of the location of the nearest tube station as the glow from the streetlights enlarges her shadow against the brick walls. 

Illya. He’ll berate her, naturally, insisting that he should have gone in with her. Now, with silence surrounding her on all sides, Gaby wonders if maybe he was right. 

“Good evening.”

The voice hits her as she rounds a corner, and Gaby stops in her tracks. Standing against the wall of the alleyway, his face partially-shrouded in shadows, is the man from the bar. 

Gaby doesn’t think. In one, fluid motion, she reaches into the arms of her dress, unsheathes the knives tucked into the lining of her bra. The metal handles are smooth and sturdy in her hands, and Gaby holds them away from her as she squares her feet beneath her.

A soft chuckle reaches her ears, and Gaby watches as he takes slow steps toward her. 

“You are no waitress,” he says, raising his hands in front of him. It almost looks to Gaby like a surrender.

“Yeah, well who the fuck are you?” Gaby’s voice is almost a shout. She wonders if the man standing opposite her can hear the rhythm of her heartbeat through her chest.

He opens his mouth, his eyes squinting and head tilting.

“I—”

Two, muted gunshots cut through the air as bullets hit the brick wall between them. 

Gaby flinches away. She brings her fists up to protect her face and scurries backward. No additional bullets follow, and when she looks through the opening of her elbows, the man standing in the street is gone. 

Gaby hisses through her teeth and fights the urge to scream in frustration. “Who’s there?” she grunts instead, aiming the blades ahead, toward the source of the bullets. 

She hears the echo of footsteps before she sees him. Stepping toward her, in a tailored Prada suit, smoking gun still in hand, is Napoleon Solo. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Gaby breathes. She drops her hands to her sides. Looking past Solo, she searches for Illya, half-expecting him to appear in the shadows. She’s unsure if she’s relieved or disappointed when he doesn’t.

“What are you doing here, Solo?”

She tucks the knives back into their lining. A part of her wants to yell, to curse at him for cutting her off, for materializing at that exact moment. A greater part of her, perhaps the part that had fled from the bar in the first place, is soothed by his presence.

He smiles when he reaches her. 

“You didn’t think  _ I _ was going to let you go in alone, did you?”

 

* * *

 

The bright, empty tube station is reprieve from the rain. 

The downpour had begun as they’d left the alley, announcing its arrival with a crack of thunder. With her heart still beating wildly, Gaby had jumped at the sound. Her nerves felt like live wires, her hands shaking from the delayed release of adrenaline. On the street, Solo had offered her his jacket, draping it over her shoulders and squeezing her hand with silent reassurance. 

They hadn’t said much much as they’d walked to the tube. Now, sitting across from each other on the train car, Gaby tilts her head and looks at her partner. 

“So you followed me in?”

Solo’s eyes flip from the map just over Gaby’s head to her scrutinizing eyes. Patches of his white shirt still stick to his skin from the rain, and his hair has begun to curl at the edges.

Silence settles between the two of them as he searches for the words. “You could say that,” is what he decides on, and Gaby rolls her eyes. 

“Illya put you up to this?” They are headed to his flat now, and Gaby mentally catalogues the insults she wants to hurl at him once they get there. 

“Surprisingly, he respected your wishes this time. This was only me.”

His answer shocks her. She finds it difficult to believe, and she narrows her eyes at Solo, as if searching for the truth. Her partner, her friend, looks back at her, an apologetic grin across his face. She wants to smack it away. She wants to be mad at him, to let her fury boil over at the implied incompetence he must believe her to have. 

She can’t though. Instead, she toes off her heels and tucks her feet under her protectively. She can’t deny that she’s grateful for him. Can’t deny that running headfirst toward the man she meant to flee from had shaken her. 

She feels no less shaken when the train slows to a halt at Camden Station.

Neither Solo nor Gaby speaks as they step onto the platform. They each point their heads down, sparing looks around the empty station. They’d taken precautions to make sure they weren’t being followed as they’d left South London together. Yet, there’s something about the echo of the train disappearing down the tunnel that makes Gaby flinch, something about the flickering, white lights that makes her stomach drop. 

She stays close to Solo as they leave the station, throwing intermittent glances over her shoulder until they reach Illya’s flat. 

“It’s me,” is all Gaby says into the callbox. She hears him breathe his relief over the speaker. Despite it being past midnight, she knows that he has waited up for her. He buzzes them up, and Solo and Gaby step out of the rain, shutting away the sound of a growing storm as they close the front door behind them. 

Gaby has always liked his apartment. He’d been placed in a sleepy borough of the city, in a brick building comprised mostly of working class families. Gaby had once watched him assist a young mother up the stairs, lifting bags of groceries from her hands as she’d struggled with two little boys and a pram. From his kitchen window, Gaby had watched his stoic expression, had noticed the way his shoulders stiffened when the woman had hugged him in gratitude.

“She reminded me of my mother,” he’d said later, and Gaby hadn’t needed to search his eyes long to find sadness. 

“Gaby?” Solo asks her now, several steps ahead of her on the stairs. She breaks away from her reverie and follows, and they climb to Illya’s flat, their mouths shut, their eyes dark and skittish. When Solo raps his knuckles on Illya’s door, his confused expression is the first thing they see when the door flies open. 

“He followed me into Korova,” Gaby explains, gesturing to Solo over her shoulder as they step into Illya’s flat. She glimpses a smile on his face as he looks between her and Solo, one he quickly evaporates when he locks eyes with her. 

“How did it go?” he murmurs instead, bolting the door behind them. Gaby watches Solo go to the kitchen in response, watches as the light from the refrigerator illuminates his face for a moment as he opens it and reaches for the bottle of vodka he knows Illya has tucked away. He pours himself a glass, offering one to Gaby. She shakes her head, hoping to clear her thoughts. 

“I was compromised.”

She watches Illya’s face harden, eyebrows sinking low and nostrils flaring. 

“Illya, I—” she says, taking a step toward him. She gulps away the fear that has not left her since the club. “I think there’s a KGB agent working with Brodsky.”

Silence follows her words, settling among the three of them. Sparing a glance over her shoulder, she sees Solo take a sip and settle into the Eames chair in the corner. She watches him ponder his glass, turning it as if to catch the fractals of light reflecting through. Gaby has seen him stall before. She has watched him distract himself with his surroundings as he thinks. She wonders what is going through his head now. 

Illya’s face is different when she turns back to him. His eyes have softened. They are far away, Gaby thinks, and her neck strains as she searches them. The only thing that gives him away are his hands, fingers tapping slowly at his side. Eventually, he speaks, his words low and monotone.

“Why do you think this?”

“I heard his voice, for one, and he speaks just like you do.” She steps even closer this time and feels her own voice growing louder. “I think he followed me on the train before too.”

His eyes lock on hers then, and her breath hitches in her throat. She cannot read them, can’t even guess what her partner might be thinking. It reminds her too closely of that afternoon, the two of them standing in the lobby of headquarters. His sudden detachment makes her own pulse quicken, and her fingers begin to ball up into fists. 

“Illya,” Solo says, more patient than Gaby can muster. She is grateful for it, grateful how his voice cuts through the tension of the room. “Any thoughts you’d like to share with the group?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head as he swallows his words. 

“Really, Peril? No friends from your former workplace that might want to, say, pay you a visit?”

“Again, no.” He shakes his head and takes two steps away from them. Gaby feels, when she looks into his eyes, as if a cloud of fog has settled over them.

Illya speaks again, and when he does, his voice is soft and distant. 

“You must have seen a ghost.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's all for chapter four, folks! I hope you enjoyed this newest installment, MollokoPlus! I can't wait to show you what's to come!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Korova Bar, tension settles between Gaby and Illya as their mission escalates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To MollokoPlus: chapter 5! I am so sorry this took me longer to post than I would have liked. I'm happy that it's ready for you now, and do hope you love this next chapter!
> 
> Thanks again to diadema, who always helps make my writing prettier :)

She has been staring at the same redacted document for hours.

The translation department is almost completely quiet around her, the thrum of rain audible even in the basement. The once-closed file on Vinciguerra Shipping is spread out in front of her. She has cleared her desk, positioning other case folders in piles at her feet. The only things left are the photographs, likely collected by Waverly and other anonymous field agents that had a hand in gathering intelligence, and the documents detailing the mission in Rome. Gaby had hoped she’d never need it again after she’d watched Victoria Vinciguerra sink to the bottom of the ocean. Yet here she is now.

“What is it you’re looking for?” It is Susan’s voice that reaches her ears. She is one of the final agents besides Gaby still in the office, the pair of them working well past the hour that everyone else went home.

“Info. Connections. Something to tell me what the hell this all means.” Gaby isn’t entirely sure she even knows.

The two women sit in silence for a moment as the weight of their work settles in Gaby’s stomach. Her meeting with Waverly earlier in the day hadn’t resolved any of the tension from the previous night, hadn’t worked to relieve any of the confusion she felt about George Brodsky’s affiliations with the man from the alleyway. She’d hoped her handler would have an answer. She’d hoped foolishly.

Instead, he’d merely looked at her gravely as she described what happened at Korova Bar. He’d paused after she’d finished, sucking in a deep breath before he reminded her, again, that caution was imperative.

“Whatever tie Brodsky has to this person, or to that group, it’s critical that you use caution, Miss Teller. Now more than ever.”

He’d reminded her, too, of the approaching election. Neither she, nor Solo nor Illya, had found anything substantial regarding the threat made to Harold Wilson. Now, with the image of a stony face staring back at her in the darkness and a potential threat on multiple politicians’ lives, Gaby feels more vulnerable than ever before.

“How much longer you got?”

With a sigh, Gaby leans away from her work and stretches back against her chair. “I’m not sure I’m going to find what I need no matter how long I stay.” She extends her arms over her head and yawns.

“Let’s get out of here, then.”

 

* * *

 

It feels as if it hasn’t stopped raining for weeks as the two women walk through quiet streets to the tube. They both pull down the hoods of their coats and dodge the large puddles gathering between the cobblestones.

“Thank God,” Susan mutters when they finally reach the dry warmth of the station. They have to run for the tube, and Gaby feels the rush of air around her as she flies between its closing doors.

With long glances in both directions, Gaby takes a seat beside her friend. She scans the other passengers, checks for upturned collars or tipped hats, anything to signal they’re being followed. Next to her, Susan’s loud voice carries through the train car. The woman is completely different outside of work; tonight, Gaby finds it refreshing.

“Are you still seeing that guy?”

“What?” Gaby asks, looking away from the rest of the car to look at Susan.

“You know,” Susan says with an eyeroll. “The one you won’t say hardly anything about. Used to be an architect. What did you say he does now? International relations?”

“Oh. Uh,” Gaby mumbles, smiling privately to herself. “Yeah, we’re still together.”

“And?” Susan asks, nudging her on.

“And… he’s great. Everything’s good.” She feels Susan huff in frustration beside her. _That’s it,_ Gaby can feel her asking, so she continues. “It’s all good. Things are just sort of weird right now.”

What little distance between them is closed when Susan slides closer to Gaby. “Go on,” she says, her voice softer. It has been a long time, years even, since Gaby has had a friend to talk about boys with.

She pauses, choosing her words carefully before addressing Susan. “October is hard for him. It’s been three years since his mother died.”

Susan nods knowingly. “I dated a bloke once who’d lost his dad. Awful stuff.”

“I just never know what to say to make it better.” She’s surprised at the sound of her own voice, at the sadness that has creeped in and taken hold in the back of her throat. She gulps back the emotions that threaten to make themselves louder. “And work is also really hard right now, for the both of us.”

She thinks back to earlier in the evening. Illya had called her from a payphone outside of Harold Wilson’s office, letting her know he was going home.

“Will you join me later?” How formal he had sounded to Gaby. In the 24 hours since the incident at Korova Bar, an awkwardness had settled between the two of them, one that they both felt, but neither could name. Gaby felt as if there were something going on behind Illya’s eyes, something happening in his head that he would not share no matter how hard she pushed him.

“Yes,” Gaby had murmured on the phone, spinning a pencil between the fingers of her free hand. She’d felt unable to say anything witty, unable to find anything to cut through the tension that made itself known. “Is that what you want?”

“Of course,” he’d said without pause, and on the other line, Gaby had felt relieved. “Use your key.”

“Does he know what you do for a living?” Susan asks.

“Not exactly,” she lies. “But I think he definitely feels the stress of it.” It was the truest thing Gaby had ever told her friend about her relationship.

She parts with Susan several minutes later, Illya’s stop coming first between the two women. Leaving the station, Gaby pulls her hood up over her ears again and listens for an echo of footsteps following hers. She finally exhales when she hears nothing. Above her, stars begin to glimmer through a break in the clouds. Gaby pauses at a street corner and closes her eyes to their light.

The short walk to still takes double the time. Gaby hesitates as she rounds each corner, squints her eyes in each possible direction. She stops at any sound of approaching voices, reminding herself of the pistol stowed away at the bottom of her purse. It reassures her as she nears Illya’s flat. Climbing the steps to his building, she smiles when she looks up and sees warm, yellow light emanating from his corner window.

He doesn’t answer when she rings the buzzer. She tries two times.

 _Probably just in the shower_ , she thinks when he doesn’t answer a third time. She hopes it’s true as she begins to press random buttons, hoping another tenant will let her in. A small voice inside of her whispers doubt as the buttons light up beneath her fingers.

Eventually, a loud buzz bursts from the call box as the door unlatches. Her plan must have worked, she thinks, stepping into the quiet lobby and shutting the door softly behind her. She wastes no time climbing the stairs, taking them two at a time as she searches for her keyring in her bag.

She finds it as she reaches Illya’s floor, jingles it between her fingers as she looks down at her feet and walks down the hall. A drink doesn’t sound half-bad tonight, she thinks, looking up from the ground to Illya’s door..

Her entire body freezes when she sees it.

At the end of the white hallway, Illya’s door hangs open.

The world grows still around her, and suddenly her heart beating is the only thing Gaby can hear. She steps forward cautiously, her eyes fixed on the door, as she tucks the keys back into her bag and fumbles with the bottom of her purse. Months ago, she’d added a false lining to the bottom, remembering the rudimentary sewing skills her foster mother had taught her as a young child. In the second lining, she’d kept her gun, along with a second passport and $100 in three separate currencies.

She withdraws her Makarov slowly and aims it forward. Her eyes pass over each corner of the building, checking for bystanders and scanning the area for hidden threats. Her search comes up empty, and Gaby takes nearly silent steps, sliding her back against the wall as she approaches the frame of the open door. Just as she takes one, slow step in, the sound of shattering glass reaches her ears.

She storms into the apartment and turns to the left, to the source of the sound she knows came from the kitchen.

The first thing she sees is Illya standing in front of the window, the breeze messing the collar of his shirt. His hands hang open in front of him, and Gaby follows them down to the shards of glass scattered at his feet. His eyes aim forward, but not at Gaby. A man stands in front of him. She takes in his frame, slightly shorter and squarer than Illya’s, takes in the nearly exposed skin on the back of his neck from a short buzzed head of hair.

That’s when she gasps.

Illya’s eyes break from the man to Gaby. His eyes light up, but not with excitement, and his lips spring open with an exhale. She thinks she hears him whisper the word “no” as the man facing him turns.

It is no surprise to Gaby when she sees his face.

She thinks he is though, for a moment. His hooded eyes twinkle with something Gaby cannot place, and his flat mouth twists into a grin.

“Ah, it appears we have company.”

His voice hits Gaby’s ears, low and gravelly like the sound of a flooded engine. It fills her with a sense of dread, and her gun begins to tremble in her hand.

“A little German thing, Illya? She’s even prettier up close.”

He has no weapon, Gaby notices. It’s the only thing she can assess before she sees Illya’s face change. In a millisecond, it shifts from the shock of her presence to the dark, glowering rage she has seen from him too many times.

Turning back to Illya, the man gestures over his shoulder toward Gaby.

“Tell me: does Oleg know about her?”

Illya moves before any of them can say another word. His body collides with the man’s, charges them both through the air and directly toward Gaby. Her breath leaves her as the two of them slam into her. She crashes backward into the door, still hanging open, and feels emptiness in her hand as her gun is knocked from her grip.  

She sees stars as she hits the corner of the door, and she falls to her hands and knees as the sting of impact sears into the back of her head.

Her ears are drowned with Russian curses, the sound of fists beating against skin and crashes of falling furniture. Gaby blinks rapidly as a dull ache forms in her skull. Her vision returns to her, and when she looks up, she sees a tangle of two men tearing through the apartment.

“Illya!” she shouts as she watches him falter from a blow to the face. He stumbles backward into a wall, and without pausing, grabs an end table and smashes it against the raised fists of his opponent.

A grunt leaves his lips, and Illya advances, swinging long, wild punches into the man’s neck and abdomen.

Gaby looks away for a moment, searching for the gun that has scattered to some unknown corner of the apartment. More Russian hits her ears, the deep voices of both Illya and his opponent indistinguishable as they spar. Finally, Gaby spots it, half-hidden in Illya’s bedroom, visible through the door that barely hangs open. Gaby crawls toward it, her stomach sliding against the glossy wood. She flinches at the sound of more furniture being ruined and of bones crunching under the impact.

She is cut off before she can reach her gun. Illya and his opponent careen directly into her line of sight, and it’s when Gaby looks back up at them that panic fills her.

Illya stands with his back to the wall, and Gaby watches as a foot meets his chest and hurls him backward, his head knocking against the wood. The man advances, sending fists into Illya’s ribs and stomach and sides. She watches as Illya hesitates for a moment, his eyes never leaving the face of the man who now attacks him.

Gaby wants to shout his name. She wants to urge him on, wants him to fight like the brutal animal she has seen countless times before. Before his name can leave her lips, he raises his arms parallel to his face. With a heave of his shoulders, Illya charges the man. He lands a hook to his jaw, launches an upper cut into his stomach. His shoulders wind up again, but he cannot aim his fist into his target. The man dodges him, stooping low, and grabs Illya around his middle. With colossal force, he sends them both to the ground.

A yelp comes out of Illya’s mouth as his back slams into the floor. He struggles for a moment, to flip to his side as the two scuffle. Another blow hits Illya square in the face, and the man settles on top of him, pinning Illya’s chest down between his knees.

Gaby sees two blows meet Illya’s face before she moves again. She scrambles to her feet and closes the distance to the bedroom, grabbing the gun that had landed partially under Illya’s bed. She turns at the moment that another punch makes contact with Illya’s face. Blood begins to flow down his chin as his lip splits open.

She steps back into the living room, her gun pointed directly at the head of the man. She can feel the adrenaline pulse in her ears, her chest heaving. She looks to her right, to the one piece of furniture not tossed aside or crashed into. Without thinking, she slams her hand into a lamp, knocking it off the surface of the table.

She doesn’t flinch when glass breaks against the ground, but both men do.

“That’s enough, mother fucker,” she yells, unsure whether German or English comes out of her. The man lands one, final punch to Illya’s face before releasing the bunched-up collar he’d held in his fist and raises his hands slowly into the air. Gaby looks past him and wants to gasp when she sees Illya on the floor. Streaks of blood spill down his face, from his eyebrow and lip, and deep purple spots have begun to gather on his jaw and around both of his eyes.

The man stands and steps away from Illya, and Gaby wonders if she sees the faintest limp as he moves. His hooded eyes are dark and livid when they finally meet hers. There is a part of Gaby, loud and prideful, that relishes the red and purple now throbbing on the man’s face as she looks at him. She doesn’t allow her eyes to look elsewhere, but from her periphery sees patches of blood blooming down his shirt, his chest heaving. His large hands, now bloody, remain up by his sides.

A beat of silence passes, the three of them paused, before her name escapes Illya’s battered lips. “Gaby,” he groans. Her eyes go to him, and the sight of him on the ground, of his beaten face and the blood staining his collar, makes her hands shake.

“Gaby, don’t.”

It is Illya’s voice that says the words, but it sounds strange and foreign when it meets Gaby’s ears. She steadies her finger against the trigger. She wants to pull it and blow a hole through this man’s head.

“Gaby,” Illya groans again. “ _Don’t_.”

Her muscles tense as she moves her finger away from the trigger. The man smiles, steps away from both of them and toward the door, and lowers his hands to his sides. He edges further away as confusion and anger simmer beneath her skin.

“I’m glad we’ve all gotten the chance to get to know each other,” he pants, looking between the two of them. “ _Skoro uvidimsya_ _,_ _Illyushka_.”

He darts from the apartment. Gaby watches him go, watches him fly down the hall and down the staircase as defeat overwhelms her. She goes after him, but doesn’t follow, instead giving the hallway a last look for any witnesses and then shutting the door behind her. 

“Illya,” she breathes, scrambling over to him and falling onto her knees. “Oh my God.”

He grunts and turns onto his side as Gaby stretches a hand onto his back. She’s not sure where to touch him as he leans away from her, afraid she’ll break him further.

“Do you—” she’s about to ask him if he needs help before he stands. From the ground, she sees him sway, closing his swollen eyes for a moment. She says his name again, fearful and hesitant and small.

He groans an answer and brings his hand to his eyebrow and taking in the blood that sticks to his palm. Slowly, he staggers toward his room. Gaby watches him go, watches as he steadies his hand against the doorframe before walking to the bathroom and switching on the light.

The sight of his dark form silently disappearing behind another door pulls at her stomach.

“Illya?” She stands too, following after him through the toppled furniture and broken glass scattering the apartment.

His name is drowned over the sound of a running tap. She walks through his bedroom and hovers in the doorway of the bathroom, sees him hunching over the sink as she takes in the planes of his bent muscles. Somehow blood has reached the back of his shirt.

“Illya,” she repeats, this time firmer. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.” His voice is muffled over the sound of water splashing his face.

“I don’t get it. Why didn’t you let me shoot him?”

She gets no answer besides the sound of running water.

“What did he say to you?” she tries instead. He doesn’t speak, and Gaby feels her forehead tighten in stress as she watches him grab a towel and dab at his eyebrow and lip. She catches him looking at her in his periphery, catches a glimpse of his distant, blue eyes. Confused, she steps closer, ducking low under his arm and turning to face him.

“ _Illya_.” Her voice is deep, burning at the edges where she feels her anger growing. “Do you know him?” Another beat passes between them. “He sure as hell seemed to know who you are.”

He stops fumbling with the towel and looks at her, then. The surface of his eyes are empty, layers of KGB training and detachment concealing something else. Something that reminds Gaby of sadness. His mouth pulls down at the sides as a small stream of blood leaks from the gash at the corner. The look on his face is enough to give her the answer.

Her voice drops low as the pit in her stomach opens. “Who was that, Illya?”

She watches him looking at her, watches as his eyes soften and his chin begins to waver. The air is cold on her teeth as she sucks in a breath. For a moment, the only sounds available to them are a clock ticking and the pattern of rain against his roof.

When he speaks, his voice is a broken, defeated sound that Gaby doesn’t recognize.

“My brother."

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dust settles after news of Illya's past finally reaches Gaby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are with chapter 6! At risk of repeating myself, I had hoped to post this yesterday, but the day got away from me. Please forgive me, MollokoPlus! I hope this chapter delivers all of the angst and (emotional) whump you hoped for. We're coming in for a landing with this fic very soon!

“I like feeling your breath on my cheek,” he’d once told her in bed. They’d laid together, Gaby staring up at the blank ceiling, her fingers fiddling with Illya’s hair. She’d thought him asleep beside her.

“What?” she’d asked quietly, shifting to hear him better.

With eyes still closed, he’d stretched his long arm across her waist, spreading his fingers in the fabric of her pajamas. “I like how it feels to be close to you.”

She’d paused then, winding a strand of his soft hair between her fingers. “I do too, Illya.”

That had been in January. It had been months since they’d returned from Istanbul, sunburnt and exhausted and hopeful— hopeful for the future of the team that Waverly had piecemealed together. That had been months since Illya had hesitantly taken Gaby on their first date, since Gaby had looked him in the eyes and told him she wanted to be with him. It had been months since they’d made love for the first time, Gaby straddled in Illya’s lap, sweat running down her spine as he’d whispered in Russian.

Tonight, standing under the bright light of the bathroom, Gaby has never felt farther away from him.

The word _brother_ echoes between them like a distant, unwelcome church bell. Gaby is not sure how long it’s been since Illya, sullen and broken, looked her in the face and said the words. Time has escaped her. She’s not sure if it’s been seconds, minutes, or hours since he last spoke.

“Gaby?” His voice is hesitant questioning. When she looks at him, his eyes are locked onto hers. A part of her is surprised when she looks back and feels nothing.

“I don’t understand,” she says, as if she were not just replaying his words in her mind. “You told me you had no family after your mother died.”

A million memories flash behind Gaby’s eyelids, bright and distracting like a movie in a cinema. She thinks of the moments that Illya had told her about his family, shared in bed and over breakfast tables and during long walks on their days off. She thinks of a past mission in Belfast that she’d been shot in the leg. Illya, distracting her, had described his mother as Solo had searched for the bullet, had told Gaby for the first time about some of his fondest memories of her when he was a boy.

“Her name was Inessa,” he’d said, holding Gaby’s hand as she’d squeezed his in return.

“Inessa,” she’d panted. “That’s beautiful.” Her words had been cut short by her own scream as Solo extracted the shards of metal from the wound.

“I didn’t,” Illya breathes, cutting that day short. “I don’t.”

“So, who was _that_ , Illya? Who was that man who acted like he knew you?” she demands.

Illya turns away from her as a drop of blood falls into his eyelashes. He wrings the towel out under the faucet, flinching only slightly when he places it back onto his face. She can tell the movement pains him. A part of her wants to go to him. To offer the same comfort that he has given her time after time, wound after wound. She fights that urge, bracing herself against the wall of the bathroom.

“His name is Veniamin Mikhailov Kuryakin. We,” Illya finally says with a gulp. “We were in an orphanage together.”

“ _What?_ ” A new wave of confusion washes over her, and Gaby grips the side the sink as she blinks and shakes her head. It does nothing to clear the buzz of confusion growing louder in her ears. “You said your mother died _years_ after you joined the KGB.”

“I was taken from her long before then.”

“You mean you and _your brother_?” Her anger rises into her chest as she punctuates the last word. She practically spits it at him, leaves him no time to answer as she flees the cramped walls of the bathroom. Illya follows her. She knows it, is keenly aware of his presence behind her as she stalks from the bedroom into the living room. She stands in the middle of the wreckage, left behind by a confrontation that now feels like it happened years ago, and spins on her heels to face him.

“I don’t understand, Illya. You told me that when your mother died, you had no one. You never mentioned a brother, never _once_ said anything about being raised in an orphanage.” Hot, bitter tears well in her eyes, and she wants to scream when they overflow onto the tops of her cheeks. Her own weakness makes her wants to flip a table. It makes her want to break something, to feel, for once, the way Illya feels. She flips her head in both directions, a frantic search for something, anything, to destroy. A harsh laugh comes out of her when her search comes up empty.

_There is nothing left,_ she thinks. The man she thought she knew and his brother had already seen to that.

“What do you want, Gaby?” He takes a step toward her, his voice low, his hand extended. The look in his eyes nearly ruins her. “What do you want me to say?”

“The _truth_ , for once.” She avoids looking at him as she wipes away her tears with the backs of her hands.

“I—” he breathes, a loud inhale and exhale through his nose. “When my father was taken away, the State wanted to punish my mother as well. So they took me from her. Threw me in orphanage when I was 10. Let little children beat me because of my last name.”

His words do little to still the furious beating of her heart. They do nothing to stop her tears as she listens to his subdued, emotionless voice.  

“I was scared. And Venya was the only child there who defended me. When my mother—” He stops, and the abrupt silence forces Gaby to face him. His nose points down to the ground when she looks up, his eyes imperceptible as they fixate on the floor.

“When your mother what, Illya?” she asks with a shaky voice.

It takes a few moments more before he speaks again, his gaze still focused on the remnants of his furniture littering the ground.

“When she sacrificed her dignity, her _honor,_ to get me back, I begged her not to leave him behind.”

A small drop of water hits the ground at his feet. Gaby stares at it, her own tears dripping down her cheeks.

“Then who was that man?”

_“That_ man is a ghost. The man I thought was my brother died two years ago.”

Gaby looks away just as Illya’s shoulders begin to shake. His words wash over her as she glances to every corner of the ceiling, hoping desperately to stop the flow of her own tears.

Brother.

Orphanage.

_Ghosts._

Illya’s words disorient Gaby, like lyrics to a riddle she cannot place. She cannot make sense of them, cannot make sense of the man standing in front of her with his head hung low and hands clenched in fists at his sides. She swallows back the lump forming in her throat and sucks in a breath through her teeth. She counts the ticking of the clock as seconds turn to minutes and pass heavily between them.

_I should have left_ , Gaby thinks as she takes in the sight of Illya’s hunched, deflated form. _I should have forgotten all about this night._

But she doesn’t. Eventually, her chin stops quivering. The hurt, the confusion, the betrayal at Illya’s words settle in the pit of Gaby’s stomach, present but not overpowering, as she wills herself into composure. Hesitantly, she moves a foot from where her feet stick like glue to the floor. She moves quietly, toeing through the remnants of shattered furniture, her eyes avoiding Illya’s.

“What are you doing?” she hears him ask, his voice a low, throaty sound. A sound so very unlike him.

“Looking for your phone.”

“Why?”

She finds it strewn under an upturned side table. Gaby crouches, fumbling as she pulls the cradle of the phone toward her, the cord and handset dragging behind along the floor. She grabs it and stands, wedging the handset between her shoulder and chin. She hears the sound of a forgotten dial tone as she catches Illya’s eyes briefly. He tilts his head at her, and the dim lights of his flat reflect off his puffy, swollen eyes.

“Because we need to call Waverly.”

 

* * *

 

Their handler is over in twenty minutes exactly, marking his arrival with a soft, precise knock on the door.

Relief washes over Gaby as she walks from her spot on the sofa to the door, opening it halfway to reveal Waverly. Any signs of dishevelment—of being awoken at an unruly hour, of rushing to get out of the house—are invisible to Gaby as she takes him in. His suit is void of wrinkles under his camel trench coat, his greying hair neatly combed under a dark fedora hat. Looking at him, Gaby wonders if the man was even sleeping at all, or if he, in some, quiet corner of the city, was awake too.

“Sir,” is all Gaby can think to say. She hadn’t anticipated what to do once he arrived, only that his presence felt very needed.

“Gaby,” he nods back. “Are you quite all right?”

“Yes, sir,” she says with a gulp.

“Very good then. May we come in?”

“We?” She opens the door wider as she repeats the word, choking back her own surprise when she reveals Napoleon standing at Waverly’s side.

“We,” he confirms with a smirk, and Gaby sighs as relief and gratitude at their presence overwhelm her.

She watches Waverly give the flat a swift once-over and cringes as he scans over the wreckage. Neither Illya nor Gaby had cleaned much in the minutes spent waiting for their handler. They’d tried, stepping carefully through broken glass and wood shrapnel as they’d attempted to lift the sofa back into its correct place.

“What was that?” Gaby had asked as they’d attempted to clean, pausing with her hands still on the couch. She’d looked across the upholstery to Illya, searching for the source of the muffled keening she’d heard as they’d flipped the couch onto its correct side. Illya’s bruised, swollen face had not met hers, the deep, purple splotches around his eyes and jaw screaming in the light of the apartment.

“It is nothing,” he’d muttered, looking down.

Gaby’s eyes had skimmed over him then, had taken notice of the way his tall frame had hunched slightly over. She’d noticed, too, his right hand braced by his hip, noticed his fingers balled up in the fabric of his grey slacks.

“Illya,” she’d said then, her voice a low warning as she’d abandoned her end of the sofa to go to him. As she’d approached, a sheen of sweat had begun to gather on Illya’ forehead.

“Illya,” she’d said again, the first, real words they’d exchanged since before Gaby had called Waverly. “What’s wrong?” She’d placed a hand gently on his side, and the sharp wince that escaped his mouth had been enough of an answer.

“Now,” Waverly says, as if reading her thoughts. “Where might I find Illya?”

How strange, Gaby thinks as she nods toward the bedroom. How strange to hear Illya’s name out of Waverly’s mouth. She watches him turn and disappear, hears a muted greeting as he shuts the door quietly behind him.

The bedroom door barely closes before Napoleon speaks.

“Are you all right?” he asks, stepping toward Gaby and placing a large hand on her arm. His blue eyes remind Gaby of brighter places, of warm beaches with yellow sand. Places so unlike tonight.

“I’m fine,” she says with a nod, squeezing his hand in reassurance.

“What happened, Gaby?”

She doesn’t say anything at first. Stepping away, she turns back to the mess of the apartment. The mess hadn’t mattered as she’d waited for Waverly; she hadn’t been able to muster the energy to care. Now, with the eyes of Solo on her back and Waverly only a door away, it feels unbearable.  

“Help me with this.”

It’s not a question. With a hesitant, confused look, he obliges, following her lead as he begins to place what remains of Illya’s furniture back in its proper place.

They work in silence for a moment. Gaby feels Solo looking at her as she plucks a shattered photo off the ground.

“Waverly asked me on the way here, you know.”

Gaby stops. She turns to Solo and wipes away the hair sticking to her face and neck.

“About?”

“About you two.”

She knows she should care. She knows that the threat of discovery, of the nights she shared with Illya and the mornings spent intertwined together, should panic her. Perhaps she is stupid not to, she thinks, scratching the black, metal frame in her hands absentmindedly.

Instead, she nods. Glancing down at the floor, she lets her eyes wander over the shredded upholstery and pieces of glass glinting from the floor like sparks from a fire. Her mouth opens and closes a few times—she can feel it move on a hinge, coming up empty each time she searches for something to say.

“I told him that as far as I was concerned, the two of you were partners. If that happened to extend to your time off the clock, I couldn't say. Only that it hasn't affected our work together."

Gaby swallows a few times before she can speak. “Thank you.”

Solo crosses the room and approaches her again. The light from the one surviving lamp in the apartment casts a dull, gold haze over his face, making him appear both stern and gentle as he steps toward her.

“Gaby. What happened between you two?”

There is a part of her—a small, buried part of her—that wants to laugh that he thinks she could have done all of this.

“He has a brother, Napoleon.” She spits the words as she says them, a bitter taste in her mouth that she resents and despises. “That man from the bar and the train. He has an entire brother that I never knew about.”

She looks at Solo as his eyes grow wide and lips part.

“Did you know?” she asks indignantly. The possibility that Solo _knew,_ had weaseled his nose into a dusty case file in the basement of headquarters and kept this from her—makes her sick.

“Of course I didn’t.” His voice is low as a different kind of surprise settles into his features.

“I thought you read all about him when you first met.” She can feel her anger rising like bile in her throat now. “I thought you said all of that nasty stuff to him about his mother. You didn’t smear in his face that his mother apparently had to whore herself out to get her own son back?”

“No,” is all Solo says as a response, his voice monotonous.

“Really? You didn’t call in a favor to the CIA and have them dig up all his dirty secrets?”

“Gaby,” he takes another step toward her then, mere inches away from her. “If I knew any of that, don’t you think I would have told you?” His whisper is heated, and Gaby feels the warmth of his breath on her face as his eyes bore into hers.

She swallows back the taste of rage on her tongue, blinks back the fresh tears that have refused to stop forming. She curses each of them as they fall. Her chest tightens as she heaves in a breath, and she shuts out the hurt plastered across Napoleon’s face.

“I know,” she relents, and her voice is a small, trembling thing. With her eyes still shut, she hears the weight in Napoleon’s feet shift. Suddenly, she is warm, his strong arms wrapping around her shoulders and squeezing her tightly. “I know you would have.”

Her anger relents then, replaced by crushing exhaustion as Napoleon holds her close to him. She’s unsure how long they stand that way—her friend keeping her standing, surrounded by chaos on all sides—before the muffled sound of Waverly’s voice begins to grow louder and the door opens slowly.

“All right out here?” Waverly asks as he and Illya step into the living room. Gaby hears Solo agree with him as he steps away, his _yes sir_ the same as any other mission brief or day at the office. She avoids Illya’s eyes as she shifts to face her handler.

“Agent Kuryakin has brought several issues to light for me this evening that I feel require our immediate attention.”

They stand in a misshapen square in the living room as Waverly speaks. In appearance, they are the same team, the same trio listening to their handler brief them on the plan ahead. Yet, Gaby thinks, nothing about this night feels comfortable or expected. Nothing feels right about the way she sneaks a glance at Illya and turns away when she finds his eyes staring back at her discreetly. Nothing feels familiar about Waverly’s voice as he speaks, his crisp tenor undercut with something strained as he addresses his agents.

“Due to circumstances we cannot yet determine, Illya’s adoptive brother has landed here in London and appears to have made several attempts to contact him.”

A surprise to no one, Gaby thinks, and she swallows bitterly as Waverly continues.

“Thanks to Gaby’s intel from several nights ago, we also know that this man—” Waverly looks at Illya a moment as the two men exchange a nod. “That Illya’s brother is also somehow affiliated with a group that appears to have been responsible for the threats made against Harold Wilson. We also know that they are planning some sort of final-hour attack on members of both parties before Thursday’s election.”

That freezing night in South London feels like years ago to Gaby as she listens to her handler’s words. She knows she should worry, should feel concerned about the impending election and the danger she heard firsthand at Korova Bar. Somehow, she can’t seem to muster the energy.

“What’s our course of action then, sir?” Napoleon asks.

Waverly purses his lips for a moment, and behind his glasses Gaby can see his eyes searching for the appropriate response. “I believe,” he says with an inhale. “I believe it essential to the completion of this assignment that we try and make contact with Ven himself.”

“You’re kidding.” It is Gaby whos speaks first. Her heavy arms fall at her sides as she takes a step toward her handler. “Even though he beat the shit out of Illya and seems to be working with the people who want to assassinate an entire political structure?”

“Gaby.” Illya’s voice hits her, low and beleaguered. Gaby doesn’t look at him, doesn’t heed the implicit warning in his words, and takes another step toward her handler.

“This is bullshit. What help can he offer us?” Waverly’s eyes remain fixed on hers as she gets closer. “What good can a KGB _defector_ bring us?”

From the corner of her eye, she wonders if she sees Illya wince.

“Agent Teller,” Waverly says, firmer than before. “Veniamin Kuryakin may be our best chance at finding out who this group is. We’ve established already that they may have ties to the Vinciguerras; I now need to know what they aim to achieve with Victoria and Alexander dead.”

They face each other for a moment, Gaby searching Waverly’s eyes. She has learned how to defuse emotional landmines since the day she first met Illya; now, her own finger taps against her thigh as she breathes slowly and deeply through her nose.

“Fine,” she eventually says, turning away from Waverly and assuming her spot in the square.

“Will I have your participation, then?” he asks. Gaby knows he doesn’t need to ask her, doesn’t need her opinion or her cooperation to complete a job. She knows she could be reprimanded for her dissent. And yet, there is something in Waverly’s face, a kindness Gaby doesn’t deserve, and she ignores her guilt as she nods.

“Excellent. Now—” he claps his hands together as he speaks, and Gaby thinks she sees both Illya and Solo jump at the sound. “I think it’s rather late for any of our liking, _especially_ since I’ll need to see the three of you first thing tomorrow morning.” 

He turns, then, and Gaby is amazed at the sudden shift in energy as Waverly smiles and walks toward the door. He grabs his coat from the hook and throws it on, adjusting the collar leisurely as if he were leaving a dinner party at a friend’s home.

“Oh, and Kuryakin,” he adds, and his eyes move right past Gaby to where Illya still stands against the frame of the door. “I am afraid you may have a concussion. Nothing major, but I suggest you have someone sleep with you tonight.”

Gaby is certain she catches a nearly imperceptible smirk as Waverly turns to Solo and nods. Understanding, Solo shoves his hands into his pockets and crosses the room to the door.

“Now then, I think we’ll be going.”

Before either Illya or Gaby can say another word, the two men leave, closing the door softly behind them. Gaby looks after it, keenly aware of Illya looking slowly from the door to look at her.

“Gaby?” he finally asks, and his voice is barely more than a whisper.

She doesn’t say anything. Her eyes fixate on the door, all of the anger and impatience and sadness and relief from Waverly and Solo’s presence in the flat now eeking out of her. There is nothing left to say, she thinks, and so she doesn’t. All that she can do is listen to the silence that surrounds the both of them as rain, once again, begins to fall.


End file.
